


Burkle, W., & Calendar, J. (1995). A non-linear representation of eight months in the lives  of two graduate students.

by Mireille



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: femslash_minis, F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-05
Updated: 2005-12-05
Packaged: 2019-03-11 16:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13528413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Fred had only kissed a girl once before. She thought she might like to try it again  now.





	Burkle, W., & Calendar, J. (1995). A non-linear representation of eight months in the lives  of two graduate students.

For a long time after Angel rescued her, Fred didn't really think about her life before Pylea. Some things she never forgot--her parents, Mexican food, the quadratic formula--but most things... they weren't forgotten, exactly, just pushed to the back of her mind. It wasn't until months later, after she and Charles were together, that she found herself thinking about the last time she'd been this close to somebody. 

She felt kind of guilty for not looking her up before, but after five years without hearing a peep from Fred, she figured Jenny had probably forgotten about her, too. 

***

"You know, I'm pretty sure this is one of the things my daddy worried about when I went to school in L.A." Fred said, running her finger around the rim of her margarita glass and licking the salt off. 

"What, that you'd eat so much Mexican food that you exploded?" Jenny grinned, moving her plate away when Fred reached over to scoop up some guacamole on a tortilla chip. 

"Not gonna happen," Fred said, grinning back. "There's no such thing as too much Mexican food." She proved her point by finishing her last taco before continuing. "No, that a lesbian witch would get me drunk and try to seduce me."

"Bisexual pagan," Jenny corrected her, and Fred didn't argue, even though she figured it'd be the same thing to her parents. "And I'm not trying to get you drunk."

"You're the one who said to get the pitcher of margaritas," Fred pointed out. They were celebrating; Jenny had just found out that she had a teaching job lined up for next year. 

"Well, I'm not trying to seduce you."

"No?" Fred looked up at her, trying to look surprised and pretend-hurt. 

Jenny laughed. "I've seen you drink tequila," she said. "I don't _have_ to seduce you. I just have to convince you to wait until we get back to my place."

Fred sniffed. "Shows you how much you know. We're not _going_ back to your place."

"And you call this a celebration?"

Even though Fred knew she usually just looked silly when she tried, she smirked at Jenny. "We're going to mine. It's closer."

***

The first that Fred noticed someone had come up behind her was when she felt the tap on her shoulder. "Oh!" She jumped, pushing her chair away from the desk so she could turn around--and, she realized in dismay, rolling it right over the foot of the woman standing there. "Oh, God, I'm sorry," she said. "Are you okay?"

The woman was wincing, but she nodded. "It's all right. I have two." 

"I'm really sorry," Fred repeated. "I was just working on--" She waved toward the terminal; it was usually easier when she didn't explain to most people what she was working on. "Anyway, I didn't hear you."

"I didn't mean to startle you," the woman said. "But the lab's closing in about five minutes, and I have to run you out, I'm afraid."

Fred swore under her breath. She needed to have that data analyzed by the next morning, and she was nowhere near done. If that water pipe hadn't burst in the physics building, she could be in her office, with a Mountain Dew and Chinese delivery and George Strait on the CD player, instead of getting kicked out of one of the undergrad word processing labs that still had a row of terminals stuck over in one corner. 

"The lab in the student center is open all night, and it has a couple of VAX terminals," the woman suggested, as Fred saved her work and began gathering up her stuff. "I'm headed that way, if you don't want to walk alone."

The student center was a long way from Fred's building; that was why she'd come here first. Still, she didn't have a lot of choice at this point; she was supposed to meet Professor Seidel at ten tomorrow. "Thanks," she said, shrugging into her backpack. "I’m Fred, by the way." 

"Jenny," the woman said, smiling. 

By the time they got to the student center, Fred knew that Jenny was taking a few classes so she could get her California teaching license and that she'd taught high school for a couple of years somewhere already, and Jenny knew--probably the entire history of Fred's life. 

"Oh, God, I'm talking your ear off," Fred said apologetically as they climbed the steps. 

"Did you hear me complaining?" Jenny paused with her hand on the door handle. "If you feel guilty about it, you can buy me a cup of coffee before you get back to work."

Coffee sounded good right now, and if Fred was honest, so did spending a little more time with Jenny. 

She'd only kissed a girl once before, at a party right after high school graduation when they were both at least a little stoned, and the other girl--Fred didn't even remember her name; she was dating Dwayne-from-AP-Calculus--had insisted it didn't count; she'd only done it because someone had bet her ten bucks she wouldn't. 

Fred thought she might like to try again now, and have it count. But for now, she'd settle for coffee, and letting Jenny do a little of the talking. 

***

They were mostly friends; they'd agreed on that. Jenny would be moving to some town a couple of hours away at the end of the summer, and Fred just didn't have _time_ for a long-distance relationship. 

"Mostly friends" meant that when Fred's mother fretted that she was working too hard, she could say that she'd gone to the movies on Saturday night with her friend Jenny and then crashed over at Jenny's apartment, but didn't have to mention that she'd woken up Sunday morning to the tickle of dark hair on her ribs as Jenny trailed kisses down her stomach. 

"Mostly friends" meant that when Fred had to get a paper finished before a conference deadline, she could lock herself in her office for four days straight without having to worry that Jenny was sulking about it, but that when the paper got past the reviewers, Jenny could still be the first one she called. 

"Mostly friends" meant that even though Fred had looked up the town Jenny was moving to and saw that they had a college that might possibly need someone to teach freshman physics in a couple of years, she didn't mention it, because who knew what was going to happen between now and then?

"Mostly friends" also meant "a little bit in love," but it'd make things far too messy to say so.

***

Fred _meant_ to visit Jenny, she honestly did, but she'd picked up more hours at the library--way easier than being a TA, and she got a lot of work done in her head while she was shelving books--and she was working on her dissertation, and it just never happened. They talked on the phone a lot, and e-mailed, and Jenny came back to Los Angeles one weekend, but that wasn't much compared to spending most of their time together. Christmas belonged to her parents, but maybe next summer, she'd say, every call. She'd have some time off between terms, and Jenny wouldn't be teaching. 

They were mostly friends, so it'd have been okay if Jenny said she'd had other plans, but Fred was glad when she didn't. 

Sometimes, when Fred was working late on something--late enough that none of her office-mates were there--she almost expected to see Jenny over in the corner, reading something with a title like _Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning_ while she waited for Fred to finish up. She'd done that last year, and when she thought Fred had been looking at the monitor too long, she'd come over and take Fred's glasses off, leaning in to kiss her. 

It wasn't one of the recommended ways to prevent eyestrain, but it did work. _Had_ worked, Fred thought, and maybe she'd look at the job postings for UC Sunnydale again. 

***

Fred hadn't spent long talking to Jenny the night before; she really had needed to get to the computer lab, so they'd just drunk their coffee and talked a little. She'd tried to let Jenny do most of the talking, but she didn't seem to have that much to say; she talked about her classes and her plans to teach high school computer science, but when Fred asked about her family, she just said she was raised by an uncle and left it at that. 

Not that Fred expected her whole life story; she'd let Jenny change the subject, because she'd just been trying to make conversation. She was just afraid it'd made Jenny think she was nosy _and_ boring. Not to mention that she'd run over Jenny's foot with a chair. 

So when Fred came out of her afternoon seminar, Jenny was the last person she expected to see. "I usually need caffeine right about now," Jenny said, holding up a paper cup from the snack bar. "I thought I might not be the only one?"

Fred grinned. "No, you're not the only one," she said. 

"Great. And during my shift in the lab this morning, I looked up some stuff about theoretical physics, so that at least I know where to smile and nod when you start talking about your research."

Fred didn't know what to say to that--she thought it was an awfully sweet thing to do, but she wasn't sure "sweet" was the right thing she ought to be telling some woman she'd only talked to for less than an hour in her whole life-- so she settled for taking the cup from her. There was something stuck to the side of it; it had been hidden by Jenny's hand before. Fred peeled off the post-it note. 

"My number," Jenny said, "just in case you're the kind of person who's not good with subtle hints like me tracking you down."

Fred tucked the note in her pocket. "I'm pretty smart," she said, grinning, "but I never mind a little help."

***

Willow was from Sunnydale; Fred knew that. And from things the others had said, Willow had been kind of a nerd in high school, so she'd probably taken computer science, and she was about Cordy's age, so she'd have been in high school at about the right time....

Fred decided not to ask her about Jenny. She knew about Sunnydale, now, and she'd rather just keep what she'd decided had happened to Jenny: she'd met somebody else, eventually, when Fred didn't ever call or e-mail, and she was now living happily ever after with her, or him. Sometimes she thought about Fred, but these days, it had been long enough that the memories just made her smile.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


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